Social Media Trends for 2014 - Have you noticed them?

[Former Member]

Recently I have been conducting some research on Social Media trends that have grown in popularity especially this year and look likley to continue to grow.

Here are the top 5 trends that most experts recognise as an area of focus for all social media specialists. I would love to hear some feedback on this and see of you are using any of these channels on a day to day basis and keeping up with the trends.

Twitter - Real Time Twitter Visual Advertising rapidly increasing and becoming more and more noticeable. Visual content is KING! as it gives you the ability to communicate complex messages very quickly. This is essential and is becoming more popular because it allows Digital Marketers to grab the attention of users quickly and swiftly.

Google Plus - The growth of Google Plus has man predicting that it will pass Facebook in users in 2016. A lot of people agree that it is time to enter the fray as along with many benefits that come with Google Plus the main benefits includes cirlces & niche content as well helping with your SEO.

Facebook Advertising: 90% of Facebook's revenue comes from Facebook advertising and the numbers are expected to keep growing. My experience with Facebook advertising is that it does work but does it work for you?

The downfall of Facebook Advertising is the constant change and tweaking that continuously happens. From the changing of the interface to the changing of ads it does become frustrating at times. The thought of limiting free traffic to your pages is a big NO-NO for me as it pushes you to pay in order to build a fan base that you've worked hard for.

Blogging: Blogging is far from dead! Tumblr has roughly over 100 million blogs and WordPress is not too far behind at 63 million. Blogging is still very dominating and a great way to get content directly to consumers and prospects easily and efficiently. Blogging if done correctly can be the sole driver of users to your website.

Podcasting: Podcasting is a "multimedia digital file made available on the Internet for downloading to a portable media player." The number of digital marketers using podcasts sits at around 5% but in the next 12 months could jump to 24%.